On Wednesday, the first day of the 3 day holiday, we decided to go to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It should be an easy subway ride away, right? Well, apparently the jet lag is still affecting my brain after all. I had written directions to 3 different places in my phone and my foggy brain kept looking at the wrong set of directions. So, when we got to the City Hall subway station, we got on the line 2 train toward Gwanghwamun. We were supposed to get on the line 1 train towards Jongno. Oops. We went a few stops up, and then I realized we were going the wrong direction. We hopped off, got on the train going the other way…and at that point, I realized we were on the wrong train entirely anyway. *sigh* So we hopped off and looked at my handy subway map, and found the correct way to get there from the station we were at.
We finally got there! The subway comes up right next to the museum there. The museum was great, and free! We toured that, and then had a snack of kiwi and tiramisu in the cafe. It was an expensive snack! I bought a few things at the gift shop, and then we bought tickets for the palace. The grounds were beautiful, even in the winter. The colors in the palace are so vibrant. I took lots of pictures…and then my camera battery started dying. I made it almost through the whole palace before it was completely dead, and then I stole the camera I bought for Mira. Brett was taking some pictures of his own! One interesting thing was that we saw many kids running around in hanboks during the holiday, and some of the adults wore them too. I can’t imagine letting my kids where their hanbok to an essentially outdoor venue…especially when it was warm and the melting snow made mud everywhere 
We went through part of the Folk museum too, but by this point, Mira was complaining constantly that her feet hurt. The children’s museum was there too, but it looked like you could only go in as a group every half an hour, and that it was guided. Well, I assume it would all be in Korean so we skipped that. Back to the subway with us! We were headed to Lotte Mart to check it out and pick up a few things.
To get to Lotte Mart, we had to go past our normal City Hall stop and get off at Seoul Station. Wow, was that an experience! Seoul Station (the big train station) on the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday is CRAZY. People everywhere. It was packed! We each grabbed a child and headed toward Lotte Mart. Another crazy place! It’s like Walmart on steroids or something. I assume it was because of the holiday, but many of the women working the floor on the first floor (where the food and cosmetics are) were dressed in hanboks. It was kind of funny to watch a woman in a hanbok helping a customer pick out meat LOL. We headed to the upper floor via an escalator. But it wasn’t a normal escalator. It was a flat moving ramp. You could take the shopping carts right onto the escalator with you. The upstairs was different too. There was a Toys R Us Toybox section where we picked out a couple of toys. There were home goods, and clothes too. We checked out the hanboks, but they didn’t have what we needed. There were little sections of children’s clothes, organized by brand. I picked out a beautiful jacket for my friend’s daughter Kali and found out that for those clothes, you have to pay there. I paid her, and she put it in a bag and stapled it up. So apparently these shops are separate little stores. We had everything we needed so we went back downstairs and checked out.
Next up was our first dinner in Korea…finally! There was a Bennigan’s right next door to the Lotte Mart so we ate their. It was really good! And the customer service was excellent. We had enough to take back to our room, that we’ll probably eat for dinner tonight. They even gave us 4 pieces of bread with our take out!
Adam fell asleep early, maybe around 7. Me and the kids stayed up until 9 PM and then went to bed. Unfortunately, that meant I was up at 5 am. Yuck.
Today’s outing is Lotte World! We are currently doing some homework before heading out.
You can find all the pictures from our trip here, though I’ll upload a few at the end of this post too: http://hllb.smugmug.com/Family/2011/January-2011/15667950_D9wnu#1174345801_NcpMJ
That palace was actually closed for renovations when we were there last year… We went to the other one by Insadong..> Don’t remember the name..
Where are yhe photos of YOU?!
Photos of me are cleverly absent